4.10.12

Q. I work at an academy of science and friends of mine work in national laboratories, institutes, research centers, and other settings outside of academia. May we sign the petition?A. Yes, feel free to interpret "academic" broadly.Q. May students sign?A. Some students organize conferences or are invited to be speakers. If you are a student in such a situation, feel free to sign. We have two concerns: a) that scholars exercise their commitment and b) that younger scholars not suffer unduly as a consequence of exercising their commitment. Younger scholars are more vulnerable than older scholars, and thus might want to postpone making such a public commitment. In our view, the people who have the greatest responsibility are those who are frequently in the position of organizing conferences or receiving invitations to them. Another way you could express your commitment is by discussing this issue with senior scholars.

30.9.12

Here are Questions and Answers regarding the Commitment we are signing prepared by Virginia Valian, Dan Sperber, and others:

Q. I'd like to be
clearer about what I'm committing to.
For example, I don't think it's reasonable to require a 50-50 balance of
men and women for the invited speakers at every conference.

A.
Understandably. The statement
commits signers – whether as organizers or as potential invited speakers – to
fairness, and fairness depends on, among other things, the availability of men
and women in the pool of possible invitees.
In some cases, the pool of women (or men) is very small, so one would expect the
representation of women (or men) among invited speakers also to be small.

Q. I'm a man and I
was just invited to give a keynote.
There's only one invited speaker and I would be it. I assume I don't have any gender
responsibilities if that is the case.

A. Well, it depends. For example, you could be the 30th
male keynote speaker in 30 years. You won't
know until you ask the organizers about past conferences (if there were any). If there was a long history of male-only
speakers, you could suggest that the group that invited you start to invite
women. You might be able to suggest
women they could invite instead of you.
Or you could suggest that the organizers have two invited speakers and
suggest a woman for the other spot.

Q. I've organized
conferences in the past and I've tried to invite women but they have said
no. Then there are no more women left to
ask in this small field with few women.

A. That's a tough
situation. If you've made a good-faith
effort, that's all you can do.

Since women are overrepresented at lower
prestige institutions, don't stop searching once you have exhausted the people at
high-prestige institutions

Do a search for women's names in the relevant
areas

Plan ahead, so that women, who might have more
non-work responsibilities, have adequate time to make arrangements

Don't automatically structure your conference –
or part of it – around an eminent man but consider building it around a woman

Provide adequate funding so that women, who may
have fewer resources, will be able to afford to come

Inquire about child care needs (for both men and
women).

Q. To the best of my
knowledge, I am unbiased. I resent the
idea that bias against women is at work in the invitations I make.

A.
The word "bias" here is not meant to imply deliberate bias. Although there may be deliberate cases, those
are not the ones we are concerned about.
Rather, we are concerned about the subtle, unintentional examples. Men's names come to mind more readily than
women's, leading to more invitations to men, leading to greater visibility for
men, leading to yet easier availability of men's names. Both men and women, to the same extent, tend
to evaluate women more negatively than men in professional contexts. [For the most recent example, see Moss-Racusin,
C., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012), Science faculty’s subtle gender
biases favor male students. PNAS, on line at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.full.pdf+html.] It is exactly because such evaluations occur
despite a genuine explicit desire for a selection based on merit alone that it is necessary for
initiatives like the present one.
Without deliberate efforts, our cognitive patterns will lead us astray.

Q. To invite women, I
would have to go slightly off-topic.

A. In our experience,
not everyone fits neatly into a program, even when they are all men or all
women. Themes are sometimes loosely
adhered to. Make sure you are not using
different criteria for men and women; you don't want to require that women
adhere more closely to the theme than men do.
Also,
in the very choice and description of topics, you may have been influenced by
the competencies and interests of the people you initially had in mind to
invite. If you had thought of more women to invite, you might have ended up
formulating a somewhat different but no less interesting and relevant topic.
The choice of topics itself may not always be gender-neutral.

Q. To invite women, I
would have to invite younger women.

A. Highlighting
younger women might be a good thing,
but try specifically thinking of older women as well. Also consider having only younger speakers,
male or female.

Q. As a conference
organizer I'm very concerned about quality of the invited speakers.

A. Of course. But why bring up quality in the context of
gender? We're unaware of systematic comparative
data, but our own experience does not suggest that men are worse speakers than
women.

Q. It seems that
ensuring better gender balance will make an already difficult task even more
difficult for organizers.

A. Yes. By signing the statement, you agree that the
extra effort will be worth it.

Q. What might I say
when I am invited to speak at a conference?

A.
Some variation of this: "I
think it's important to have a gender balance at conferences. You probably do, too. Could you tell me what you are doing to
ensure that?" Then you decide
whether you think the organizers' efforts are adequate. You might also quote or
paraphrase the Commitment you have signed, and ask whether and how accepting
the invitation would be consistent with this Commitment.

Q. I am a woman and I
don't want to be invited to a conference (just) because I'm a woman.

A. Of course
not. Such an invitation is insulting and
appears to treat women as fungible. But not being invited (just) because one is
a woman is even worse, because it prevents one's work from getting star billing. Focus on doing the best for your work.

Nor does one have to interpret being chosen on the basis of
gender as an insult. Men don't. Women chosen on the basis of gender rate
their performance more negatively than is objectively appropriate, take less
credit for a positive outcome than is objectively warranted, and have less
interest in continuing as a leader than do women who were supposedly chosen on
the basis of ability. In contrast, men rate
their performance equally highly whether they are told their selection is based
on merit or gender [Heilman, M. E., Simon, M., & Repper, D. (1987). Intentionally favored, unintentionally
harmed? The impact of sex-based
preferential selection on self-perceptions and self-evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 62-68]. Keep in mind that gender schemas cause both
men and women to slightly overvalue men's accomplishments and competence and
slightly undervalue women's.An analogy with geographical distribution may be helpful. Organizers of international conferences often make an attempt to have geographical diversity, even if it takes more time and effort.

Q. It may sound
strange, but I'm worried that this effort could boomerang and result in even
more unbalanced conferences.

A. Actually, there is some support in the literature for that worry. [Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., & Monin, B. (2010). Moral self-licensing: When being good
frees us to be bad. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4/5, 344–357]. A quote from Merritt et al: "the opportunity to disagree with
blatantly sexist statements or to pick a woman for a consulting job made
participants more likely to [later] describe a stereotypically masculine job as
better suited for men than for women. It thus appears that the opportunity to
obtain a moral license freed participants from the anxiety that goes along with
making morally ambiguous decisions."
By implication, an initial failed attempt to invite women speakers could
reassure organizers of their good intentions and result in their putting their
major energy into inviting men speakers rather than continuing to work to
invite women. Being aware of this risk should help minimize it.

Q. Won't public
accountability make it more likely that people will in fact work to promote
gender balance and neutralize moral licensing?

Commitment

We are a number of academics in different fields and different countries who have signed the following Committment (Translations are available here en español, en français, in italiano, Magyarul, in het Nederlands, По-русски, Українською, 日本語訳):

"Across the disciplines, disproportionately more men than women participate in scholarly conferences - as keynote or plenary speakers, as symposiasts, or as panelists. This, we believe, is the outcome of widespread and generally unintended bias. It is unfair, it hinders advancement in scholarship, and it is especially discouraging to junior scholars. Overcoming this bias involves not just awareness but positive action. We therefore undertake to make our participation in conferences – whether as an organizer, sponsor, or invited speaker – conditional on the invitation of women and men speakers in a fair and balanced manner. "